One switching principle, built one chapter at a time
This is a living, web-native edition of a classic course in Power Electronics. Each chapter lives on its own page — readable on any device, searchable, and free to share. The journey starts with the semiconductor switch itself and ends with the converters that spin electric vehicles, tie solar farms to the grid, and carry power across continents.
The sequence follows the standard electrical, electronics and instrumentation undergraduate syllabus, building from devices and gate drives through rectifiers, choppers and switched-mode supplies, inverters and PWM, AC–AC converters and passive components, motor drives, and finally the modern applications in renewable energy, storage and transmission.
30 of 30 chapters are published. Chapters still in preparation are listed below in grey so you can see the whole plan, but they are not yet links.
How to use this book
Read Part 1 in order — the device chapters are cumulative and everything later assumes them. After that you can take Parts 2 to 5 in any order. Do the quick checks as you go; they are there to catch a misunderstanding before it compounds.
Each chapter is roughly one to two lectures. The section recaps work as slide summaries, the common-mistake boxes as discussion prompts, and the interactive figures project well — moving a slider in front of a class makes a trade-off land in seconds.
Go straight to Summary & Formula Sheet in any chapter, then attempt Test Yourself with the answers hidden. If a question stalls you, the section recap it came from is the shortest route back.
Use the filter box below to find a chapter by keyword, then jump to its on-page contents. Every equation appears in that chapter's formula sheet with a note on when it applies — which is usually the part that is missing elsewhere.
What is inside every chapter
The chapters follow a consistent structure, so once you have read one you know where to find things in all of them:
- Chapter brief — prerequisites, outcomes and an honest time estimate, before you commit.
- Concept, then intuition, then explanation — every difficult idea gets an analogy or a worked picture before the algebra.
- Common-mistake boxes — the specific wrong answer, side by side with the right one.
- Think about it — open questions with a collapsible nudge rather than a hand-out answer.
- Quick checks — short self-tests with answers hidden until you ask, placed where the misunderstanding usually happens.
- Real-world applications — where the idea shows up in equipment you have actually used.
- Interactive figures — sliders that let you feel a trade-off instead of reading about it.
- Worked examples, formula sheet and key terms — everything needed for revision in one place.
The learning path
Part 1 is the foundation and everything depends on it. After that the four conversion families are largely independent of one another — so you can follow your syllabus rather than this book's numbering.
All 30 chapters
Power Semiconductor Devices
AC–DC Converters: Rectifiers
DC–DC Converters and Power Supplies
DC–AC Converters: Inverters
AC–AC Converters and Passive Components
Electric Drives
Modern Applications
The laboratory
A separate Power Electronics Laboratory runs alongside this book — twelve experiments, from the V–I characteristics of an SCR to solar MPPT, each tied to the chapters that explain it.
The laboratory is built around one claim: the reading that disagrees with the theory is the most valuable thing that happens in the lab. So every experiment asks you to predict the measurement first, using an interactive figure set to your own bench values, and then names the mechanism behind the discrepancy rather than leaving you to write "instrumental error".
Each experiment page carries aim and apparatus, condensed theory, a circuit diagram drawn to be wired from, a numbered procedure, blank printable observation tables, a model calculation, sources of error, precautions and troubleshooting, a simulation alternative for benches without the hardware, and viva questions with hidden answers. Open the laboratory manual →
Every converter rests on one idea: never use a switch as a resistor. Drive it fully on or fully off, and let inductors and capacitors carry the energy in between. The first chapter builds that foundation — why switching beats linear regulation, the four conversion families, the ideal switch and the ways real devices fall short of it, and the applications the entire course is built around. Open Chapter 1 →